


Nothing for it

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Past Relationship(s), Robert's Rebellion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 13:53:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/675130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Willam Dustin rides to war, never to return, his horse no consolation to his wife for what she has lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing for it

The only thing that Barbrey can do is provide a mount. When Willam is called to war, there is nothing for it. Her protests will not be fitting, so she bites back the venom that begins, even now, to cloud her thoughts against House Stark ( _We are theirs to use and use_ ), and plays the role of the dutiful lady to her lord. Although she does not agree with the decision to go south ( _Let those hot-blooded southron fools fight their own petty wars_ ), it is done, it is necessary in the eyes of her liege lord, and any vestiges of love that she might have borne for that house and its members have been stripped away by the years and burned to death in King’s Landing. The eagerness in his eyes is what finally causes her to give pause. Willam Dustin was not a remarkable man in any way, but he has been a good husband to her, a kind companion, and he has never asked more of her than she was willing to give. 

They do not speak much on the day before their parting. Willam is preoccupied with last-minute preparations and ensuring that they are well-equipped for their long journey, and Barbrey disappears on an errand that she will not speak of to her lord husband, bound for home, for the Rills. She returns before nightfall with one of her Ryswell cousins, a horse tethered between them who is the finest in her father’s stables. It has not taken much to persuade Lord Rodrik to release the creature, for Barbrey knows her father’s opportunistic nature well, and is easily able to play upon it, remarking on how all will cast eyes upon the fine horseflesh and envy Lord Dustin his mount. And after all, wars require cavalry, and the Rills is not so far that lords may not seek to barter for their own. He is the finest beast in her father’s stables, and she knows it, a gleam of triumph in her eyes as she heads toward Barrowton, the last rays of the sun brilliant against its mahogany coat. 

_I can do this for him, at least_ , she thinks, as surprise dawns on her husband’s face when he catches a glimpse of them, attending to some last minute preparations in the yard. 

“For you, Willam,” she says breathlessly as she dismounts, undoing the tethers and walking the animal to him so that he is able to have a closer view. “You will be the envy of all on a mount as fine as this.” 

There is pleasure in his eyes. Willam does not care much for pomp and prestige, but she knows well how plainly he will fare in the train of powerful men like the Starks, wealthy men like Wyman Manderly with all of the coin of White Harbor behind them, fearsome men like the Umbers and Karstarks, hardened in their distant holdfasts, and her goodbrother Roose Bolton, whose soft manners are only a mask for the true menace behind his measured courtesies. It is the most that she could do for this man who took her for his wife knowing full well the use that life had thrust upon her, who complemented her sharper ways with his temperate conversation and gentler manners, who laid with her and did not begrudge their lack of an heir as some men newly thrust into their titles would do. 

 

“And so I shall, on a Ryswell red such as this,” he replies, gloved hand brushing her equally concealed fingers as he takes the animal from her. 

That night they will lie together for the last time before the war. 

*

She merely nods curtly when Ned Stark brings the animal, ill-used from privation yet still alive, and the news of her husband, nothing more than bones interred under a pile of rocks in some distant wasteland. She was right, after all, about the wastes and pointlessness of wars, but there is nothing for it now.

*

The horse is left to its own devices in the stables at Barrowton. Even though it has been ill-used by circumstance, Barbrey cannot bring herself to apply any sort of tender care to its scarred hide, or to personally ensure that it eats its fill to close in the frightening gaps in its side where the ribs jut too close to the surface of the skin. While it is one of her father’s stock, and quality besides, it is a living reminder of insult and loss, and while she feels a certain shame at her cruelty in wishing that it had died on the journey north, she cannot bring herself to look upon it. So she bids the stablemaster to send it west to the Rills, where it will live out its days with its kin, and die forgotten. 

She rages at her sister, who comes with her child, both clothed in black for the goodbrother and uncle that they have lost, and Bethany bears the brunt of her frustrations with a cool nonchalance that she has learned in the halls of the Dreadfort, her face a mask before Barbrey’s tearstreaked cheeks and bloodshot eyes, the motion of her hands gently mannered as she takes her younger sister in her arms, stroking the tangled hair that she has left neglected, falling down her back in tangles. Domeric merely clutches the hem of her sleeve, his solemn little face full of a pity that she cannot bear, as it comes from the heart of a child. 

She presses her fist to her lips even when she is alone, afraid that if anyone, even herself, overhears her grief it will become all the more real. And Barbrey cannot bear it, for it is the last in a long succession of sorrows that she has known in her relatively short life. One by one, she has seen her disappointments writ large before her, has seen those that she loved taken from her, by war, by marriage, by corruption, and Willam’s death seems the final insult to her. 

_I promised myself that I would not love again, and that has been a lie_ , she thinks.


End file.
